1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information communication system in which a user accesses a cell station (base station) using a personal station (portable information terminal) for acquiring the desired information.
2. Description of the Related Art
The information communication system in conventional radio communication includes a database 101 for storing multimedia information, exemplified by the picture information, character information or the speech information, a network 102 supervising the contents of the data base 101 and controlling the accessing by the user, and a personal station 103 via which the services from the network 102 may be received, as shown in FIG. 1.
The user may have access to the network 102 using the personal station 103 and also may have access via the network 102 to the database 101 for acquiring the information from within the database 101.
The database 101 may be of the concentrated management type in which the information is managed at a single point, or of the distributed type in which the information is managed at plural points.
In both of these database types, since a large amount of the multimedia information is stored in each database, communication traffic management, that is management of the total time of a switcher device of the network 102 taken up by communication calls made in a unit time via terminal equipments, such as the personal station 103, becomes crucial.
In a majority of cases, since there are only one to several databases 101, the communication distance from the personal station 103 to the database 101 tends to be increased in case data communication is performed using a connection network, so that communication charges may be excessively increased for the same received information.
On the other hand, since the number of installed personal stations 103, network speed or the transmission system is determined by the occupied time of the switcher, the communication traffic management needs to be corrected each time a new personal station is installed.
In addition, because of the voluminous multimedia information stored in each database, the load on the hardware for executing user access control tends to be increased.
There is disclosed in JP Patent Kokai Publication JP-A-4-347938 an arrangement having a database on the terminal side. In such arrangement, since a database needs to be stored in the terminal side, a large memory space is required, which is not desirable for the personal station.